Delirium - Lauren Oliver

"I've been so used to thinking of what the borders are keeping out that I haven't considered that they're also penning us in" (pg.206)

And that's what emotions is like isn't it? You can't have the happiness without the pain; erasing risk of pain is killing the possibility of happiness. This book is pretty amazing. It has passionate love at its core, but I love its satire on humans' emotions. How we are so afraid of the negative emotions, we rather choose to be cured of it and not have a chance with positive emotions. How stability, order is preferred over the highs and lows that make life. 

It's a story about a girl, who met a boy who woke her up from her walking sleep, to open her eyes to the fears that were blinding her. Yes, they are 18 and yes it is corny. But it is sweet. Most people will be able to relate the passionate love(s) they had to the detailed descriptions of the story. I'm quite surprised that I managed to read that much detail (time to tackle Time Traveller's Wife perhaps) but I do like how she describe passionate first love down to a tat. Another aspect of the story that I like is the fictionalized world which makes up the context of the world these characters live in. Like how there is a book called 'The Safety, Health and Happiness Handbook, or the Book of Shhh' which is like a diagnostic manual for love as a disease, aptly named amor deliria nervosa. Pretty cool stuff huh? I like how it takes a jab at the current system of the world where we so prefer to categorize, to cure, to control - nice. 

But more than being a love story, like I mentioned earlier, its core tells about our discomfort with emotions. Without emotions, people are detached from their friends, even their own kids. That it becomes impossible to have meaningful conversations, and people who are "cured" from amor deliria nervosa can't even remember how it is like to comfort someone who is nervous. I'm guessing the story picks upon how passionate love can be so joyful yet also so painful that many people choose to be cured of it. Yet, our world is not just passionate love is it? It consists of the attachment to parents, friendship and even care for your dog. You can't take away passionate love and still expect to be attached to the rest. Question to ponder. Of course, passionate love is not the only type of love that exists between two people, but to bring it to the extent where you're paired up with a person based on your evaluation scores and to walk by the beach yet staring into distance? That kinda world freaks me a bit.

All in all, a wonderful book with relatable descriptions to life (I find myself nodding my head subconsciously, haha) and makes us wonder if getting rid of emotions is really a cure to happiness.

(Image source: http://cdni.condenast.co.uk/320x480/d_f/Delirium_gl_30nov1_320x480.jpg)

"Love, the deadliest of all deadly things: it kills you both when you have it and when you don't. 

But that isn't it exactly. 

The condemner and the condemned. The executioner, the blade; the last-minute reprieve; the gasping breath and the rolling sky above you and the thank you, thank you, thank you, God.

Love: it will kill you and save you, both." 

"That's when you really lose people, you know. When the pain passes"

"Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is; an edge, a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.

Before and after - and during, a moment no bigger or longer than an edge" (pg.269)